Weekend projects

As I look back over the weekend, seems that we did very little. Except we actually did a lot.

Friday night, we had a bit of a grill emergency, so Saturday, a few hours had to be devoted to the grill and some heavy elbow work. Fortunately, I had a bottle of an excellent degreaser that made short order of what would otherwise have been a nightmare activity and while it isn't as clean as new, it is incredibly clean. Took two days to get all the grease off my hands, but the grill is clean.

I also bound the April Linus quilt with a foldover binding. More on my Linus quilt progress soon.

Most of Sunday was spent mounting this circle 8 quilt to it's background. It's been appliqued down. And, true to my own way of doing things, I'm not happy and will be taking it off again and adding a bit of folded bias tape to the edge. We talked about it yesterday and I didn't do anything, but after seeing this photo this morning, I know I'm going to have to add it. Probably blue or red and it will go right along the edge and hopefully will only be a quarter inch wide and will keep that light outer edge from blending in too well with the light background. Oh, well. Live and learn, right? But, if I'm careful, I should be able to work that right in with a minimum of effort. As far as I'm concerned the hard work is already done, just getting this huge thing mounted to a back. Undoing a few stitches, inserting the tape and then re-sewing it down should be a piece of cake. The thing is so huge, I had to pin it and do all the sewing on the living room floor. At one point, every straight pin I own was in this quilt. Three different sizes. Hundreds of pins.

I used a blind stitch to applique it on, so only every 5th stitch will need to be cut to slip the tape under the edge. Now, I just have to make about a mile of bias tape. Yippee for me.

There are a couple of funny looking lines in this picture where things come together, but when it was all stretched out on the floor, those were not there, so I think they'll quilt out if I'm careful. Because each wedge is cut on the bias, the whole thing wants to stretch, so if I've done nothing more than stabilized that willingness to get bigger, I've accomplished a lot.

Have I mentioned lately that making a quilt without a pattern is crazy? It's just CRAZY! Lots of figuring it out as I go. Remember that this came to me as two partially assembled circles and a ruler. No pattern, no plan, not enough fabric to finish. So, a few starts and stops are to be expected. And, quite a bit of seam ripping.



And, this is what Rob picked for his birthday present. His previous 65 gallon tank had just sprung a leak and it was worrying him and he was having a good bit of trouble replacing it. But, he found this one that's only a bit smaller and most of his weekend was spent moving water and large fish from one tank to the other.



We are truly fish keepers. Some of the fish in this tank have been with us for over 5 years and came from the guy that gave Rob the tank to start with. Some we've acquired. And, fish that outgrow either Sydney's or my tank go into his tank.

The rest of my Sunday was spent making a belated birthday cake, three banana breads, a pork roast and doing dishes. Again, yippee for me, right?

Take care and have a great Monday.

Lane